THE CORRUPTING ALLURE OF DIRTY DRUG MONEY

Are Mexico's cartels buying U.S. cops?

NOGALES, ARIZ.–In the dusty towns along the border here, some of the new
math just doesn't add up. Take Rafael Landa, for instance. Until last month,
the inspector for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service was
pulling down about $35,000 a year. But after police raided his modest pink
house here and arrested him, they found some $300,000 in cash. Authorities
believe that smugglers for two Mexican drug gangs paid Landa and two other
INS inspectors close to $800,000 in return for their allowing some 20 tons
of cocaine to slip across the border.

All three men have pleaded not guilty to charges arising from the
investigation, which the FBI dubbed "Operation Ghost Boat."

But such tales abound along the border here, as Mexican crime syndicates
have come to dominate the drug business.

Two thirds of the cocaine headed to the United States now crosses the
Southwest border, making this a land of opportunity for government agents
willing to look the other way. Late last week President Clinton certified
that Mexico's government is cooperating with U.S. efforts.

But Drug Enforcement Administration chief Thomas Constantine told a
different story in congressional testimony.

Constantine said Mexican cartels operate with impunity by corrupting many of
that country's police agencies "on a systemic basis" with $1 million weekly
in bribes.

Now there's worry that the same tactics are succeeding on this side.
Following the Nogales arrests, Tucson FBI chief Steve McCraw said border
corruption was so "pervasive . . . it's a national disgrace."

Getting a fix on the real extent of corruption isn't easy. Investigators say
most cops are honest, but the trend lines aren't good. Between 1991 and
1996, a special FBI initiative along the border resulted in the convictions
of 22 law enforcement officials accused of smuggling-related offenses. In
the past two years alone, there have been 28 more convictions. And these
figures do not include scores of local officers convicted along the border
in other probes.

$10,000 a pop. For drug smugglers, the bribes are chump change.

The 20 tons of cocaine allegedly waved through Nogales by the three INS
inspectors had a street value of $1.6 billion, so paying less than $1
million to move it was a bargain.

And the money buys more than just a blindeye. Corrupt cops and agents can
wave through loads at preappointed times, drive the drugs through inspection
points themselves, or provide cartels with sensitive intelligence.
Investigators believe that in many recent corruption cases, border cops have
been recruited by friends of family members, and often the inspectors are in
debt. An immigration inspector in El Paso, Texas–who had hefty credit-card
debt and was on the verge of bankruptcy–used a cell phone and beeper to
inform a smuggler when and where he would be working, waving through 10
shipments of marijuana at $10,000 a load.

What's doubly troubling are reports showing that U.S. agencies aren't doing
all they can to stop the crooked cops. A Treasury Department report said
last month that the U.S. Customs Service had failed to fight corruption
effectively, in part because of a "long history of strife and infighting"
involving two of its investigative units.

Customs Commissioner Raymond Kelly promises a shake-up.

A draft of a U.S. General Accounting Office report says that both INS and
Customs have "missed opportunities to learn lessons and change their
policies" to prevent corruption, in part by not analyzing closed criminal
case files.

The report says the two agencies failed to follow their own anticorruption
policies, and reinvestigations of employees–required every five years–"were
typically overdue, in some instances, by as many as three years." A copy of
the report was obtained by U.S. News. "Traffickers are richer than ever,"
says Sen. Charles Grassley, the Iowa Republican who requested the GAO
report. "And they are looking for the weak spots." More and more, it
appears, the smugglers are finding them.